the lake & park school

From: Camille Hayward
Date: 7 December 2011
To:   DeAnna Martin - Director Route Planning - King County Metro Transit
Subject: Route change for #14 metro bus route


We are a small private school housed in the Mt Baker Park Presbyterian Church and serve a population of  approximately forty preschool through fourth grade children annually.  Next year will be our tenth year of operation.  We rely on the Number 14 bus for most of our transportation needs.  In the past, the bus stop
was very convenient, right across from the church, which allowed for safe boarding.  Currently, the bus stop is still easy for us to access as we board at Trudy Sanders Triangle Park.  We would be most adversely effected by having to walk our children across busy streets to reach the proposed new boarding point on 31st.  Please know that we are becoming more and more a school that goes “into the field” as we travel to parks and our own p-patch at Colman Park.  We are teaching our children to be responsible, ecologically aware citizens who contribute to the common good;  we see the effects of that beneficiary when we ourselves are welcomed on public transit.  Learning to ride the public buses and light rail early is, in my opinion, akin to learning to vote as a matter of civic course.  Please consider our unique needs and weigh those against any expressed detriments that were raised in considering making such a drastic route change away from the neighborhood the 14 seeks to serve, and away from its current and future constituencies.


Camille Hayward
Director/Founder
206 841 3541
The Lake and Park School
3201 Hunter Blvd South
Seattle, WA 98144

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3201 Hunter Boulevard South. Seattle, WA 98144 . 206.721.3480 . admin@lakeandpark.com . www.lakeandpark.com

Woodworking Wednesdays

The second group to do woodworking poses in front of Mike on November 23

 Upon first entering the room, our young ones may cover their ears and look up at us as if to say, “Are you sure this is the right room?” Their initial confusion over the loud noises, big machines, and older kids does not last long, however.  Mike Lawson quickly approaches with a smile and a reassuring sense of confidence, and welcomes everyone into his woodshop.  Mr. Lawson is the last Industrial Arts Teacher in the Seattle Public Schools, and we feel honored to be partnering with him and Franklin High School.

The first group in action

Students have been assigned into groups of eight or nine, and each group gets four sessions to really start, get into, and finish a project.  At the start of each session, Mr. Lawson dumps a large box of wood scraps on the table, and makes sure each child has a hammer, some nails, and safety glasses. Our students then select pieces from the table and begin hammering away! Mr. Lawson coaches them on technique, and encourages interactions with his own students and ours.  

Katie at work

The Lake and Park kids really look up to the high school students, and thoroughly enjoy having the opportunity to learn from them. They will, in fact, often turn down help from our own staff, and wait for a turn to be helped by a “highschooler.”

The students walk away from this encounter with a number of positive experiences: they have an even further understanding of the importance of community relationships, they have a new skill set, and they have a physical creation of their very own, not to mention a sense of pride and accomplishment that is so strong, I am sure it can be sensed by passers-by. We love woodworking Wednesdays!

Making the Case for Thematic Curriculum

When I see how much we have learned since we first began listening to the stories of Robin Hood just eight days ago, I am reminded of how effective the thematic approach to teaching is.  In such a short time, but with the benefit of concentration, the children have not only been introduced to the legend, but have begun to make it their own.   We have expanded the dramatic play area to have it run from east to west across the north side of the Big Room.  A divider allows for the children some privacy as they make up their own imaginary games.  The names of Maid Marian and Robin Hood are heard as they create their own interpretations of this heroic epic.  Props such as stuffed forest animals and wooden bowls and stumps help set the scene.  Children have made paintings of oak trees: displayed with them are ink stampings of autumn leaves which were a segue from our study of plants per se and our move into the Robin Hood story cycle with the oak tree and the temperate forest having such a central role.

We are making the most of three traditional folk songs which evoke the period. One is called “Come Follow, Follow” and recounts a singer asking others to follow him “to the greenwood tree”.  As we sing, we imagine Robin Hood calling to his men to follow him to Sherwood Forest. Perhaps the biggest draw in the school right now is our active engagement with bows and arrows.  As we shoot blunt arrows at targets, we are truly involved.    A song that brings the role of archery into our awareness is “The Keeper”.  It features a call and response motif, with the two parts blending in a robust “Derry, derry down, among the leaves so green-O!”  We are singing this song in many ways, learning four verses.  Sometimes we get up and skip during the chorus.  There is a lot of interest in learning to play the autoharp as an accompaniment to this melody.  Newer to us is “Who Killed Cock Robin?” a lament for a dead bird that was shot with a bow and arrow.  “Who killed Cock Robin?”.  “I,” said the Sparrow.  “With my little bow and arrow.  It was I.  It was I.”  We will add more songs to our repertoire.  Singing is a vital part of this unit as all of the Robin Hood tales began as folk ballads which belonged exclusively to the oral tradition and were only much later written as folktale.

To see the vast impact of the ballads, do notice the display that runs across the windows in the Big Room.  These are mounted copies of prints made by Virginia Lee Burton (of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel renown) in Song of Robin Hood by Anne Malcolmson. In the frontispiece of this Newbery Honor book, she shows a printing press.  We will discuss the role of the press as an adjunct to our study.   In doing so, we will discuss the role it had in standardizing spelling; this concept makes a fitting counterpart to our growing awareness of the evolution of English.  As we sing such phrases as “Whither shall I follow?” and listen to tales where “quoth Little John” is de rigueur for “said”, we usually do not need to stop to ask what such words mean.  But when we point them out, and the children write them down next to our common vernacular, they see a stunning difference that can yet be recognizably traced.  We might say, “Good morrow,” to one another, but the children will know we are saying “Good morning.”

The version that we are reading as our main text is Howard Pyle’s classic The Merry Tales of Robin Hood.  Illustrated as well as compiled by him, it is very much in keeping with the ballads and is told in a beautiful way with archaic language that does not interfere with the telling, but that requires the listener of today to sit up and pay attention. Past expressions and words that allow us to see the changing nature of our language’s history also allow us to enter into the milieu of the times as we substitute “thou for “you” and “ay” for “yes”.  I recommend that parents read this book to their children and do so more than once.  With older children, one might point out some of the word changes; it can be a treat for the adult, too, to learn with the child.  (One phrase that popped up for me, of which I did not previously know the origin, was “will-he-nill-he” from which comes “willy-nilly”; in the earlier form it refers to someone being made to do something whether he wished to or not.  In our usage today, it suggests a sense of the haphazard:  “The clothes were spread out all willy-nilly on the floor.”)  A child cannot get enough of this epic. One can read a chapter that’s been heard before, or skip about in the book.  It makes for a good adventure for the parent and child to launch out on together.

In order to understand the story, we began the unit in an unusual manner for a school—watching the animated Disney version.  The classic movie served us well.  Created in keeping with the folkloric element of the tale, the connection between ballads and story is made apparent through the conceit of the Rooster as Allan-a-Dale, bard.

We began making our own Robin Hood hats last week.  These are made of “Lincoln green” felt and require just one seam.  Maddy ran the sewing machine.  After the seam was sewn, each child began to hand sew the hat, adding a feather, buttons, and other details as she/he chose.  Plans are to make quivers or knap sacks.  We will spend a day at Seward Park wearing our hats and taking our bows and arrows into the forest.  We’ll  make of it our own Sherwood Forest and have our own “in the greenwood” adventures.  

The children’s knowledge of the tale is revealed in paintings and drawings but most clearly in their original stories.  North Room children wrote tales in which each child took on the role as a participant in the merry band of outlaws in Sherwood. The choice of the role was each child’s own, as they were free to invent new characters or to choose characters from other tales. Look for these to be posted here on Ampersand.

By the time we attend the actual production of Robin Hood at the Seattle Children’s Theater on December 2^nd, we will come to the show open to the dramatic interpretation of the moment, knowing that that interpretation is just one aspect of the literature.   Living deeply into a universal tale, in this case a classic trickster story, opens the door for living into other archetypal stories, into myth, and on into fiction and its constant contextual counterpart that is always verifiable history. 

*********************************************************************************A Sampling of stories by North Room children follows:

My First Meeting with Robin Hood

By Tate

My name is Cole.  The Sheriff was not being nice to my family.  My mom was old and died.  My sister died because the Sheriff killed her.  I ran away.  I came to a Rain Forest and when I was pretty far into the rain forest I came to a river.  When I was about to step onto a bridge to cross the river I saw a person.  I said to him,  “I will cross first.”

He said, “No, I will cross first.”

We started to have a word fight.  Then we got really mad and started to go on the bridge.  We started to fight with sticks.  Then I did a really big blow and he fell off the bridge.  Then I helped him back up.  I asked what his name was.  He said his name was Robin Hood.  He asked my name and I said it was Cole.  I asked to join his merry men.

Robin Hood said, “Only if you can beat me in a shooting match tomorrow morning.”

In the morning we went out to the oak tree and did a shooting match.  At first Robin Hood hit the target.  Then I hit the target.  On the last one Robin Hood missed.  On my last shot I split robin Hoods arrow open.

The End

xxx


To read more of the children's stories, click the link below!

UNICEF fundraiser allows real world math questions!

Trick-or-treat for UNICEF is a long-standing tradition at The Lake and Park School.  Once again this year students collected coins while trick-or treating and we mailed a check for a total of $ 382.36.  At a time of year when children can get caught up in how much candy they are getting the opportunity to help children around the world serves as a counter balance. 

A couple of days before Halloween we met as a whole group to learn about the work UNICEF does by watching a short video and also talking and listening to each other.  At community meetings such as this you can feel the value of a multi-age setting, as older children share their experience and younger students look to older students for reassurance.  Thoughtful questions were asked and students grew in their personal understanding as they stretched to address concerns.

Coin collection boxes were a part of the school Halloween carnival.  Some children constructed their own boxes. Others stopped by the table to get a box, put their name on it and tucked it away for later in the evening when they went trick-or-treating in their neighborhood.

The week following Halloween students brought in coins, sorted, counted, recorded totals and added their money to the group collection jar.  The integration of mathematics into the daily curriculum took center stage.  For some students sorting and counting coins was the top challenge, for others counting by 5’s and 10’s and converting 15 dimes to $1.50 was an excellent use of place value.  Still other students worked on totaling all of their donations.  Math games extended our work with coins: tossing for heads or tails, recording and then making equations was one game.  Students ready for further place value work played race to $1.00 with pennies and dimes.  As we move into story problems, the money we raised and how many vaccines we helped to purchase for children around the globe will further our connection with children everywhere and bring real life meaning to mathematical problem solving.

Building Literary Roots

The group gathers daily for stories and song.

  As I sit down to write this, four and five year olds are riding bikes and scooters and tricycles downstairs in what we call The Trike Room.   Diana, a parent volunteer, has finished helping children  begin the first step in making candle holders for a craft project that we will continue to work on during our Halloween Carnival on Monday, October 31st.    Upstairs in the North Room, Eileen is reading Ray Bradbury's complex and compelling Halloween Tree to our primary children.  They are drawing what they hear and are off on an adventure worthy of reading every year.  (As a part of our curriculum last year we looked at the connection between All Hallow's Day, All Saint's Day, All Soul's Day and The Days of the Dead (El Dias de los Muertos).  This year we have not focused on the history of the holiday, yet the children are reviewing what they learned before as they listen to Eileen reading aloud.  Soon the children will come up from the Trike Room and join Laura on the rug as she reads a chapter from Pippi Longstocking, the classic Astrid Lindgren novel.
      We devote a lot of time to reading aloud.  Research has proven that reading aloud to your child at home is the key factor in developing a literate human being.   (Parents are the first and best teachers in this regard.  One of the best books about reading at home is Dorothy Butler's, Babies Need Books.   I love to give a copy of this book to a new parent;  out of print, it is widely available second hand. Not only does it discuss books for babies, but introduces the parent to the joys of shared reading all the way through age six.)  Our interests range way beyond research-proven literacy benefits.  What we do in the classroom when we engage in reading aloud is make space in our circle and our day for a whole host of characters and events to join and belong to us.
      When I was very young, probably two, my father read a great book very hard to come by even then because he found it in a barn in New England and its publication date was 1920.  Called The Tale of Johnny Mouse this book by Elizabeth Gordon was read and reread all the way through my earliest childhood. A line from that book became a line that our family repeated with regularity when the occasion called for it,  "Hold on, for we shall go swiftly!"   When we were driving and came to a steep hill, or riding a trike and taking off, or careening downstairs in a cardboard box, someone might say, "Hold on, for we shall go swiftly!"  In the book, the action centers around Johnny Mouse as he is given rides by various flying animals as they help him fly to the moon.  Each animal in turn says to him, "Hold on, for we shall go swiftly!" The line allowed for us to transcend the moment and became for my family an inclusive saying that we evoked often.  It gave us a sense that we were a unit and had had shared experiences.
    The same thing happens in the classroom.  When I read The B.F.G. by Roald Dahl, we get to know the big, friendly giant who gets his words mixed up.  He says to Sophie, "Little girls chitter all the time."  He means they chatter--they talk nonstop.  In the middle of the classroom at work,  I might say, "Too much chittering;  we need to get back to work."  Everyone knows what I mean by that.  We have brought the BFG into our classroom and he is now a part of our communal experience.
      When Eileen reads about Pipkin, the perfect boy's boy in Bradbury's novel, the children are right there with her and with him.  He has come into the classroom and can be referred to in the spring.  When Laura reads about Pippi who is the strongest girl in the world, all of the children imagine that they know Pippi as a real person.  When Tom takes out a picture book and reads about the Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, who isn't even scared when two big shoes go clomping down the road behind her, we (the Big Room children, and I, too) want Tom to read that book again and again because  even though we know what is going to happen, we want to re-experience a little of the ruacuas, laughing  joy of it again, and yes, a little bit of the spooky strangeness of it, too.When   I read The Iron Giant, were surprised to find that we are rooting for him.  At first, we thought that he would take the role of the one who must be ultimately done away with.    But  under poet Ted Hughes' empathetic words, we want the giant to be fed and accepted.    All of the above examples are simply that-- examples that narrow down to the essential: we read not because we are required to read, but, if we have been given literature as children we know what it is to live with literature.  We read because we are hungry for it.

Merna telling a scary story

        Yesterday, we were privileged to have our board member, Merna Hecht, tell us Halloween stories.  Merna is a professional storyteller and librarian and has worked broadly with children and teachers in literacy education.  She brought folk tales to life as she told her stories.  Without looking at pictures in books, and without even seeing the words on the page, the children looked at Merna's face and hands and were brought right in to the middle of the story.  Such telling allows us to be right there with the storyteller and the story.  There is no one making the pictures for us.  We are truly "living" story when we just listen.
         Next month, we will be turning our attention to the bardic tales of Robin Hood as we get ready to attend the Seattle Children Theater's production of the legend.  As we engage with the characters of Robin and all "his merry men" and of Maid Marian, we will be learning of the place the spoken word holds in the development of poetry.  We will study some of the many ballads that have been collected and come to appreciate the fact that the tales of Robin Hood, as in many stories of folk origin, have no single author.  They have come down to us via the spoken tradition.
           We will be asking families to bring in books and materials that relate to the Robin Hood legend.  We would love costumes and pretend bows and arrows and will be turning our dramatic play area into Sherwood Forest.  All of the children will be participating in hearing the story told and in making it their own.  We will keep everyone posted about when we attend the theater and will include four year olds in the trip.  We are saving seats for each four year old to have a parent in attendance.  Although there is dramatic, fighting action in the play, we will be discussing the choreography behind the action.  We have found that when the children are well prepared, all ages really enjoy seeing a play that has some substance to it.  

              Camille
              October 28, 2011

Lake and Park Open House

Emergent Curriculum in Action

As I looked to bridge the long summer days spent outside in the Pacific Northwest with our annual return to the classroom in early September, I decided to create a small science corner with a display of seeds and seed pods, along with containers of fall blooming flowers. The idea was to generate conversation and begin the habits of careful observation and inquiry.  The display also gave me a chance to get to know the students in the North Room as I listened and watched them interact with the natural materials, tools to assist in observation, and with each other. It turns out that small seed, planted in late August as we prepared the classroom for students has been watered and fed and is really starting to germinate.

First day in the field with science journals.

 In the weeks that followed families brought in seedpods from their gardens for students to explore. We opened them and counted and sorted seeds. We looked at the different shapes and learned about the many ways seeds travel. So far this year we have taken weekly trips to many of the local parks, including the Colman Park P-Patch. In the parks we looked closely at plants and leaves and seed pods and thought about the ways they grow. We considered their variety as we drew the many interesting shapes.

In the classroom students use both the eye and hand to help them see.

Both inside and out we have been reading books about seeds and plants. We have generated lists of questions about seeds. As we practice asking questions, we hold off on finding quick answers so we can grow more comfortable with the process of inquiry. What at first glance looks like a simple question with a quick answer, given some time, can bloom into a question that scientists have already spent hundreds of years exploring. It is exciting to join this group and feel the connection with those who have asked these questions before us. All the while we are learning to listen to each other. One question leads to the next, a related question that is clearly following a shared path of inquiry.

Our first visit to the Colman P-Patch led us to wonder about the Lake and Park School having a garden of our own. Like the City and Country School that inspired Camille to found Lake and Park, we all felt we could learn so much if we were able to add an outdoor “classroom” in the form of a garden we can tend throughout the seasons. The P-Patch has the space available and the students are enthusiastic as we begin to plan and to prepare the beds and paths, and to learn what it takes to make a garden grow. We hope our whole school community will want to be involved.

Stephanie gives primary grade lesson in plant life cycle

Already Walter’s Aunt Stephanie, a Seattle Tilth educator and local gardener, has visited the classroom, bringing scarlet runner bean plants for exploration and dissection. This was a perfect plant to use to introduce the plant life-cycle because on a single plant we could see both the blossoms and the pods. Children picked the pods and opened them to reveal the beans/seeds. Stephanie answered children’s questions and inspired more questions such as, “where does water come from anyway?”

Making plans at the garden.

And so our curriculum grows, turning and winding as the children’s skills and understanding develop.  The prospect of tending our own garden together now exists like a seed in the good soil our inquiry has created. We all share the anticipation and excitement of helping it thrive.

A garden is a natural focus for building community. With a common purpose, everyone contributes meaningfully. As we nurture the plants in our garden, and eventually provide our own snacks and food, we also support each other as creative thinkers and doers.



Please consider ways you might participate in the Lake and Park Garden at the Colman P-Patch. we welcome comments and suggestions.

Weeding and measuring.

Please share your ideas in the comment section below.

Words and Images of our First Month

learning to jump rope on a sunny day in September

Since school began one month ago, we have moved into a comfortable rhythm to our days and weeks.  Each Monday and Friday we keep open for outside the school exploration or in house projects.  On Wednesday afternoons, a group of children head to nearby Franklin High School to do woodworking under the guidance of Mike Lawson, Franklin’s industrial arts teacher, and his students.  On future Wednesdays, other activities will take place such as Brazilian dance and chess.  On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons the Big Room children join with first graders on literacy, with first graders working on penmanship and beginning reading and all the children joining in on making books of their drawings and dictating their stories to the teachers, who then read them to the whole group and make time for them to be acted out.  On Thursday, that group joins together for movement class with Eric Johnson, while on both afternoons the children in grades two and above participate in guided literacy groups with Eileen and place value work in mathematics with Laura.

We are making the most of our units, having taken our scheduled fire drill with the Fire Department as an opportunity to learn about our local fire station.  Do come up and see the children’s art work in the hall that relates to their interpretation of the poem by William Carlos Williams about the number 5 in gold on a red firetruck moving through the city in the night.  After bringing the poem alive with oral interpretation, accompanied by triangles for clangs and lights being switched off and on to simulate the following:

            Among the rain

            And lights

            I saw the figure 5

dramatic play in "fire station"

            In gold

            On a 

            Firetruck

Later, we looked at a reproduction of a painting by Charles Demuth that was his direct response to the Williams’ poem.  Do have your child show you details in the painting.  It will be in the upstairs hallway along with the children’s work throughout the next week.
      We then toured our local fire station, drew and wrote about significant aspects of the station and rebuilt the station at school with blocks.  Children had time to read books about fire trucks and other fire related topics and to pretend to ride a fire engine as we turned part of the Big Room into a fire station.

We have a display about ferry boats ongoing in the Big Room block corner and will focus on our region’s ferry boat pathways and islands over the next several weeks.  Please know that we plan to ride the ferry to Winslow on Bainbridge Island on Monday, October 17^th. This will be a whole school venture.  Please have your child at Triangle Park with 1.25 bus fare by 9:15.  We will board the bus soon after and walk to the ferry terminal from a downtown bus stop.  We will then walk off the ferry and spend time at a playground on the island within walking distance.  Children will eat lunch at the park.  We will return later that day and are planning to meet parents in Mt. Baker Park at 4 pm.

Eileen reading a story at the Mt. Baker viewpoint

     On Friday of that week, we will spend the day at Lincoln Park in West Seattle.  This is a great location and will afford us a day to study the ferry boats coming and leaving the slip on Vashon.  We will also get to explore a salt water beach, something we do rarely as a school.  We are hoping that parents might be inspired to provide us with a tasty picnic lunch.   We will have a sign up for lunch and see if we works out for that.  We would  love to have someone to barbecue hot dogs and another parent to bring chips,   We will be asking parents to drive to Lincoln Park and pick up there at three.  We will post a sign up so that parents may be in touch with one another about driving arrangements.  The Friday event will be cancelled in case of real rain.  Both these excursions are planned with four year olds in mind;  they are welcome to join us for the day.

scientific observation

While we are off site, we take advantage of all that the outside offers us to further the academic learning that can take place away from school. Children will be drawing and recording their observations;  they will be engaged in first hand social studies and science  as well as art.  We will have time on each trip for silent reading and read alouds.  

The following week, the last week in October, we will devote our thematic focus to  Halloween.  We are asking children to bring in pumpkins, but please wait for the last week. Also need small wheelbarrows—great fun is had putting pumpkins in wheel barrows in the Big Room.  We will look forward to Merna Hecht’s ninth year in telling us Halloween stories—this takes place Thursday afternoon on the 27^th.  We will have a party on Halloween Day;  all children are welcome to wear their costume to school that morning.  We are hoping to have a Carnival experience in the afternoon in the Trike Room, with parent volunteers manning and supplying various booths that we can come down to and explore.  There will be a sign up for those volunteer jobs as well as for supplies to make it a festive day at school.

on the bus

There is no school on Friday, October 14^th, due to a teacher in service day.

The Lake and Park School

In naming this blog The Ampersand, we refer to the symbol that abbreviates the “and” into one icon, and to what is discussed below in terms of the school’s name.  It is our hope that the blog will allow us to find a way to step back from the daily work that we and the children are doing and position it in such a way—through still photo, video clip, child’s painting, child’s spoken and written word, teacher commentary, outside expert commentary, etc., in order to offer an inside look to parents and others whom we choose to share the material with.   

In choosing the name for The Lake and Park School, I wanted to emphasize two concrete aspects of our environs that are a prominent part of the school experience.  The location of the school on the beautifully appointed Hunter Boulevard is one.  As part of the Olmsted Parks Legacy, our locale is decidedly not a rural one; rather it is that of a planned human influence on the landscape—a park in the urban sense, albeit designed to bring the wild into the city.  We are definitely a school in a city; our fortunate place within that city is one where the park system defines the neighborhood.

The neighborhood exists in one area of the shoreline of Lake Washington.  We have ease of access to the lakefront and make it a frequent place of exploration.  The children dig in the sand, search the water and sky for bird and animal life, pick up beach glass and rocks and use water as a natural medium for play.   As we return to the same shore month after month, we experience a familiar setting in a variety of conditions, and begin to establish a sense of our place in the natural world. The simplicity of the name evokes two concrete aspects of the child’s world—water, earth.  By mention of the concrete it draws attention to the fact that the child learns first from interaction with the stuff of the real world.  In our classrooms, we may go beyond the concrete to the symbolic and abstract, but we do so, even in the older grades, by referring back to the concrete.  Thus the classrooms are outfitted with real materials and children work with real tools as they explore those materials.

Perhaps most importantly to my thinking, The Lake and Park School deliberately echoes the name of Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s The City and Country School,  begun in 1914, still in existence in New York.  It was started by Carolyn Pratt, a progressive educator who invented the unit building block, a staple of our classrooms here, and was renamed after the school expanded into two locations in order to allow children the opportunity to explore distinct aspects of the modern world.  Our school’s name pays tribute to this legacy in seeking to understand  all that went on during the progressive era in American education, as well as to our intent to maintain that heritage.

Camille Hayward